White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the ban, which won’t apply to U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
“The policy will be implemented in light of extraordinarily high Covid-19 caseloads and multiple variants circulating in the India,” Psaki said in a statement.
India recorded 387,000 new infections on Thursday, a record high, and nearly 3,500 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Gayle Smith, the State Department’s coordinator for global Covid response and health security, told reporters in a conference call Friday that the surge in India is “very, very serious.”